Route Based on Physical NIC Load

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Route Based on Physical NIC Load is based on Route Based on Originating Virtual Port, where the virtual switch checks the actual load of the uplinks and takes steps to reduce it on overloaded uplinks. Available only for vSphere Distributed Switch.

The distributed switch calculates uplinks for virtual machines by taking their port ID and the number of uplinks in the NIC team. The distributed switch tests the uplinks every 30 seconds, and if their load exceeds 75 percent of usage, the port ID of the virtual machine with the highest I/O is moved to a different uplink.

Table 1. Considerations on Using Route Based on Physical NIC Load

Considerations

Description

Advantages

Low resource consumption because the distributed switch calculates uplinks for virtual machines only once and checking the of uplinks has minimal impact.

The distributed switch is aware of the load of uplinks and takes care to reduce it if needed.

No changes on the physical switch are required.

Disadvantages

The bandwidth that is available to virtual machines is limited to the uplinks that are connected to the distributed switch.